Sitting in the Shower with Bottles of Cider

Faceless.

I am figuratively... faceless. Just another pony who is stuck in a world where everything that's amazing happens to ponies other than myself. Even little things. Things like love. Things like living. I am boring, but not because I want to be. No, I'd be spontaneous, fun, and adventurous if I weren't afraid of losing everything and ending up with nothing at all.

It's just so easy for everypony to say: Go out and follow your dreams without planning, without making sure you HAVE a future when you get back from whatever soul searching you plan to do.

I'd rather not come back to nothing at all.

Though my situation is not much better. I go to work, pull the nine-to-five, and come home to an empty house with barely enough bits to keep the small apartment I live in under lease. I suppose it could be worse, right? There are some ponies out there who have no homes, or have spent the past thousand years or so in slavery, spirited away from the world. Even then, though... somepony went out and saved them from a low life of servitude and disharmony.

Where's my saving grace?

I've worked hard too! My home was a broken one and my grades were good... up until that last year in school. Nothing challenged me there, so I slacked. It didn't do me any good in the long run. Still, I went off and joined the Equestrian Royal Guard, so I could find something that could challenge me... which... didn't go to well. I was a smart pony in a world where ponies aren't the type to revere intelligence. So... obviously that went just great.

Eventually I quit, went out and got a job at the train station, moving cargo around. I didn't have any skills from my time in that translated to something that could be useful on the outside world, away from the regimented lifestyle of a Royal Guard. I kind of wish I were like that one fella... what was his name? Shining Armor? Everything just seemed to fall in place for him, the lucky sod. Even got himself a pretty little wife. I hear they rule that kingdom I mentioned earlier somewhere way up north.

So I've come home... Again. Same time as always after the same kind of work every day with the same jerk of a supervisor looming over me like an insurmountable obstacle. I always do my best, but... bad things always seem to happen around me, or I just get caught up in picking up everypony else's slack that I forget some of my own duties.

I work hard, okay? I just... I don't know how NOT to work hard. How to relax and not try to do EVERYTHING if I know nopony else is going to step up to the plate if I don't. The new stallions are mostly lazy, with the exception of one or two. The ones that aren't completely lazy don't have the motivation or drive to meet the standard, but we're so short on ponypower that we can't afford to get rid of them! So I'm stuck picking up the slack and trying to teach them things over and over again that they have already been taught. Meanwhile, because somepony decided not to close a boxcar before it went off to the next station, a certain pony who just HAPPENED to be under my hoof as a trainee, I get yelled at and told to 'shut the buck up' by a supervisor when I try to explain that I did a follow up and none of the cargo, by some miracle, had been lost on the way to the station. I'm not supposed to have to BABYSIT these stallions! They're old enough to remember the basics of their job. For Celestia's sake, they've been at it for a MONTH now.

Just close the Moon-damned door when you get done with inventory! It's STANDARD. PROCEDURE. Taught from DAY. ONE!

But I got blamed for it. And it's always like that.

But it's okay. The jerks that hired me know they can yell and bluster all they want, but they can't fire me. They don't document anything properly anyways, and even if they did, they'd be screwed without me and they know it.

Not only that, but I finally got home. I said that already... didn't I? Did I?

Whatever... I'm happy. I'm in the shower... the warm, almost scalding water flowing over me, a bottle of cider in one hand... and another bottle of cider in the other. The only thing that could make it better would be a sweet-smelling cigar.

Oh... did I mention? I'm pretty young for a stallion... and life's taken a turn like this already. I figured this kind of unhappiness only happened to older ponies, but now I'm guessing that it just starts here.

... and just never stops.

I could probably do better for myself. In fact I know I could, but I just don't have the motivation after work. After working hard and being mentally beaten down for my efforts every day, it just takes the energy out of me. I have a huge aptitude for magical matrices... and I could probably get a job maintaining the spell matrix that protects the sewers, residents' locks, power systems, and other things in Ponyville if I really got into studying... I mean, I even have a book about that! A whole book, and it covers absolutely everything a pony could want to know about the subject! I could learn it... but... I don't know... I'd rather just sit around and stare at the sky after work...

But you know what? Thank Celestia for the little things. Sweet Apple Cider is really the only thing I have in life any more to make things seem not so bad.

I'm gonna rest for a while now. Maybe write some more later... sure glad I bought this waterproof booklet. Didn't even know they existed until I stumbled on a crate of them at a Winter-Wrap-Up after-season sale a few months back.